


and then he does it all again

by Marmoniel



Category: Leverage
Genre: Angst, F/M, Hopeful Ending, Hurt Eliot Spencer, Immortal Eliot Spencer, Jewish Eliot Spencer, M/M, Multi, OT3, Reincarnation, Sort Of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-19
Updated: 2021-03-19
Packaged: 2021-03-28 08:34:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,641
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30136851
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Marmoniel/pseuds/Marmoniel
Summary: Eliot Spencer can't die. But his soulmates can. Regardless, he finds them every time.  But he's had enough of watching them die over and over. This time, he's determined to keep them at an arm's length, to not let himself fall in love.He'll only realise he's failed that when it's too late to keep any more secrets. And, maybe, he's beginning to realise, Hardison and Parker might love him too.
Relationships: Alec Hardison/Parker/Eliot Spencer
Comments: 6
Kudos: 46





	and then he does it all again

When Eliot sees them, his heart breaks once more. But really, what’s one more heartbreak added to his pile?

Eliot’s lived so many lives, held them both in his arms so many times, but he’s fucking sick of it.

They always come back, it’s always them. They’re always different, but he’s just the same. Just the same fucked up guy who can’t die. And they’ve got different bodies, different names, different personalities. But somehow, they always complement his own soul. 

When he’s with them, it’s like his soul is slotting into the place it belongs. A little pressure, and it falls into the puzzle and completes the picture. A three piece puzzle. 

He’s not sure what the picture is, what the three of them make up. 

All he knows is that he loses them. Over and over. They die. They always die. They always die within 24 hours of each other, the world reshaping itself so that he can never have the comfort of one of them to get over the other’s loss.

So when Eliot finds sees that the job he’s been hired for involves other people, he sighs and says that it’s just the one. Maybe he’s missed working with other people a tiny bit.

But then, oh G-d then, he sees them for the first time. He’s always been able to tell who they are when he sees them. It’s like the whole world pauses for a moment. Time slows down. It’s only him and them. His soul reaching out.

This time, he reigns in the feeling. Internally whispers ‘down boy’ at his soul.

He promised himself after the last time they’d died, 100 years before, that he wouldn’t let himself do this again.

He was done. It was too much pain. For all parties involved.

For them, they had to find out that he was immortal, that he wouldn’t age with them (if they made it that long), that while they were mortal and fragile, here he was, being dangled in front of their faces like an immortal carrot, here’s what you can’t be, here’s what you’ll never be. And then, of course, there’s the dying. They always die. As is the nature of death, it comes for everyone.

Except him.

Many times, he’s been the cause of their deaths. Because immortal he may be, but all-knowing or all-powerful he certainly isn’t.

For the rest of his years, he will regret every single death of theirs he’s caused. 

So, he promised himself that he wouldn’t let himself love them. That he would keep them an arms length from him. That he wouldn’t let them in the walls he put up. Walls that usually were reserved for everyone but them.

Since they met, he’s been nothing but growly and surly and grumpy. Answering any attempts at reaching out from them with harshness. 

He misses them, though. 

When he sees his reflection, his heart clenches because he doesn’t see them beside him. When he lies in bed, he can’t feel their warmth beside him. When he laughs (as rare as it is), he doesn’t hear their laughs layering with his own. 

‘But they could do all that,’ a traitorous part of his mind whispers. ‘You just have to let them in, to tell them.’

He bats away the thought with a hand that’s become more practised in the year since he met them this time around.

When the group separates after the Second David job, he is both relieved and hurt. Relieved for a moment of reprise from their presences, from the daily reminder of what he’s missing out on.

And hurt, because oh fuck, he misses them even more when he doesn’t have the bare minimum of comfort from their presence.

It reminds him of the years where they’re dead and gone.

Still, he remains strong. He’s determined to let their lives play out normally.

Eliot has tried this before. It’s like he never learns the lesson.

In the 1800’s, he’d decided to simply run whenever he came across them. Yet every single time, circumstances shaped themselves to cause their meeting again.

Eliot got on a ship to take him as far as possible? Then the ship sunk, and they’d be part of the rescue team, as a break from their usual work. 

He went camping in some remote part of the world? They’d stumble upon him as the archaeological exhibition they were working on happened to take them to his location.

Over and over, they found each other. There was no escape.

After half a dozen times of notable meetings, the two of them confronted Eliot and demanded answers on why their lives seemed to be intertwined. 

They eventually got the answer out of him, and refused to let him leave again, citing the reason that they’d just find him again soon enough. He never could run for very long.

This time, he wasn’t running. Eliot knew it didn’t work. He was just keeping his distance. 

He continues the dance of not letting himself fall in love.

By the time he realizes what has happened, it’s too late.

Somehow, Hardison and Parker weaseled their way into his life and heart without him noticing.

He can tell when they ask him what’s wrong on the days where everything seems more hopeless than normal. When he’s upset after a job. When he get’s a text from Parker asking what’s for dinner, and he sets her a place at his table. When he habitually dissolves vitamins into Hardison’s bottles of orange soda, because so help him if this man dies of fucking scurvy when Eliot can help it. When they run into him in a quiet moment of prayer, and wait for him to be done.

And when he processes all of that in one go, and realizes that yes, he does love them, and maybe they care for him too. Somehow. Even though he hasn’t made it easy for them. At all.

He’s still mulling over the implications of that, (and sort of internally yelling at but also thanking G-d for it) when Hardison almost dies. 

A job goes wrong, and Hardison ends up strapped to a bomb which has a ticking down countdown. By the time they get to him, there’s 7 minutes left on the countdown.

Eliot can’t stand the thought of losing Hardison again. He hasn’t even gotten to hold the other man in his arms, to leech the warmth from his skin on a cold morning. To press their bodies together and worship him the way he deserves to be worshipped.

And if Hardison died, then he’d lost Parker too, within the day. Sure, the universe would work to find a reason for her death too. Maybe an old mark would find them, or Parker’s line would snap and she’d fall to her death. Regardless of the way they got there, the same thing would happen. She’d die.

They’d be dead, and he’d be alone again.

They’d be dead, and it would be his fault. Maybe if he’d protected them better, done more, they would have lived.

But, they weren’t dead yet. He could save them now.

Nate and Sophie had had to force Parker out of the room, but Eliot had refused to go.

“Hardison, you’re gonna be okay, I promise. You’re gonna be okay.”

“Eliot, man, I can’t—“ Hardison said.

“Listen,” Eliot said, grabbing Hardison’s face in his hands, not even taking a moment to appreciate the hum his heart gave off. “I can get you out of this. Do you trust me?”

“Of course, but—“ Hardison’s eyes were wide.

“No buts. Alec. Do you trust me?”

“Yes!” 

“Good. I know how to disarm it, but I can’t do it from this angle. So I need us to swap postilions.”

“Eliot, I swear to G-d, if this is you matyring yourself out of some misguided sense of hating yourself, I swear to fucking Christ—“

“Alec,” Eliot said, because using the other man’s first name had worked so well before. “I promise that we will both survive this. Now fucking switch with me.”

Through some tricky maneuvering, Eliot finds himself holding the bomb. 

“Great,” he says. “Now, get the fuck out of here.”

“Wait, what?! No!” Hardison’s voice turns angry, as though realising he’s been tricked. Which is fair, as he has been. 

“I’m not going to die,” Eliot says, which is true. “I just can’t focus with you in danger with me.”

“I am NOT leaving you,” Hardison says.

“Nate,” Eliot says, and after a few moments Nate enters the room, and drags a resisting Hardison out with him.

As the two reach the door, Nate turns to look at Eliot, and gives him a nod.

Eliot, for all his years on this Earth, still can’t tell exactly what the nod means.

Regardless, he takes comfort from it.

Eliot was only sort of lying when he said to Hardison that he knows how to disarm the bomb. He’s pretty sure that he knows. There is a small margin of error though, as this is a newer model of the bomb than the one he’s certain of.

He turns his mind to the task of disarming it, focusing wholly on it, now that the people he loves are out of range. 

Eliot’s so engaged that he doesn’t hear the people talking to him through the earpiece that he forgot he was wearing, until he’s down to, ironically enough, the last wire. He spares a look at the timer, he’s got 20 seconds left. Right on the brink of time running out, then.

“—and the stupid vitamins that you make Parker eat. I’m a little offended, y’know, that you never make me try to eat any. I wouldn’t, but you could have tried.” Hardison’s voice filters into his brain. The man doesn’t sound good, Eliot can hear the tears in his voice. 

“He puts them in your orange soda,” Parker says, and she doesn’t sound like she’s in much better condition.

Eliot takes a second to drink in the sound of their voices, to let them fill his mind. 

If he gets this wrong, it won’t kill him, but it sure will hurt.

“Love you guys,” he says, braces himself, then uses his favourite knife to cut the last wire.

Pausing for a moment, nothing happens, and he lets out a breath.

And then, a flash, and pain. Oh G-d, so much pain.

Air, air rushing through his lungs, his heart beginning to pump furiously in his chest, his brain kick-starting, the light beaming through his eyelids, bright against the darkness of his brain.

And oh G-d, the pain. Familiar, but he’s never been able to get used to it.

He forces his eyes open, wincing at the light, but quickly adjusting.

His mind goes to Hardison and Parker. Nate and Sophie would have gotten them far enough away. They must have. 

Fuck, he’s going to have so many questions to answer after this.

A while later, Eliot has succeeded in pushing all of the rubble that was covering him off, and is slowly making his way to where he can see light coming from.

When he emerges into the light fully, he can’t see the team there. 

Which makes sense, when he thinks about it. Nate and Sophie must have been worried about the police response, and gotten them all out of there. However, it’s very inconvenient for Eliot right now. 

In short order, he’s hot-wired a nearby car, and is driving back to their headquarters.

When he walks through the door, he was expecting the surprise. He was not, however, expecting the punch from Hardison after his moment of surprise is over. 

After the punch (which has a surprising amount of force behind it), comes a hug, and Hardison sobbing into his shoulder. 

Next, comes a hesitant Parker, her footsteps silent as she walks over, and puts a hand on his arm, as though making sure he’s solid.

Eliot makes uncomfortable eye contact with Nate, who gives him a smile, and stands and begins ushering Sophie out of the room. Sophie gives Nate a look, but on the way past, she puts a gentle hand on Eliot’s shoulder, and mouths ‘talk later’ to him.

Eliot, Parker, and Hardison stand like that for a bit, Hardison attached to Eliot’s chest, and Parker with a hand on his arm. For the life of him, Eliot can’t tell if Parker is doing it for her own comfort or Eliot’s. Either way, it’s helping him too.

He almost lost them.

He almost lost them again.

Eliot has seen his soulmates (what else could they be?) die OVER and OVER, and he almost saw it happen again, except this time he hadn’t even told them how he felt, who he was, where he’d been and come from. He’d almost let them get away from him.

His lifetime as ‘Eliot Spencer’ had been filled with hard times, and hard feelings. He’d done things he regretted after coming back from moments of carelessness and loss and hurt and pain. After this many years, he still made mistakes. He still hurt people.

This time though, the people he’d hurt had been his partners. Partners in this life, and every previous one. Partners all the way back to his very first life.

He loved them. 

He always did.

He hadn’t told them.

He’d almost consigned himself to spending the next 100 years alone. He’d almost let them get away, let them die, without telling them how loved they were.

So loved that he found them and followed them in every lifetime he could. And they always left him.

How had Eliot been so stupid as to see that all he was doing was causing them and himself more pain? All three knew that they loved each other, he was just keeping himself back out of fear.

The fear of their deaths. Which always came. But that fear shouldn’t be enough to stop him from caring for them.

His knees buckle, and he doesn’t manage to catch himself on the wall in time. Eliot and Hardison crashed to the ground, Parker hovering anxiously above them.

Eliot closes his eyes, and feels tears stream down his face.

His mind replays death after death of his two soulmates in front of his eyes, like a morbid slide-show. It focuses on the ones he caused, the ones he could have stopped but didn’t make it to in time, the ones he failed them in.

He’s aware of Hardison’s hands roaming his body, searching for injuries, but it’s like his brain is stuck tuned into the images in front of his eyes, like a broken radio.

Eliot feels a gentle hand on his face, cupping his cheek. 

“Eliot,” he hears Parker’s voice say as though she’s far away. “Eliot, come back to us.”

“What are you—?” Hardison says.

“Shush Hardison. Help me. He needs us.” 

“Alright, alright.” Hardison says, and another hand touches his shoulder, grips him tight. “Come on man, we need you here right now. I can’t— I can’t do this without you, you hear me? Now, please, I’m so bad with tears, I’m about to start— Ow! Parker! Why did you poke me?”

“We’re being nice right now! That’s not nice!”

“I’ll show you nice,” Hardison mumbles under his breath. “Ow! Okay, okay, I’m sorry! Why do you have such pointy fingers?”

It’s this familiar bickering that draws Eliot back to himself. Regardless of the life, regardless of the year, regardless of anything, they three of them always argue and bicker and debate. It’s taught Eliot that not even the perfect relationship, a relationship ordained by fate itself, has no troubles, no arguments, no strife. It’s always solved before long, as they love and trust each other, but it’s small moments like this that remind him that relationships take work and commitment.

Eliot scrunches his eyes shut and works to get his emotions under control. It takes a few long moments, but he feels stable enough to not burst into tears once more. He opens his eyes, and sees Hardison and Parker kneeling on either side of him, their eyes wide and vulnerable.

Both give out sighs of relief at seeing him open his eyes.

“I’m fine,” Eliot says, before that can ask if he’s okay. “Uninjured and—“

“Man, shut the fuck up.” Hardison says, his tone stern, and Eliot shuts up. Hardison’s face twists, and he seems unsure of himself. “Look, you— I don’t even. You should have died. Did die? I don’t know. But you can’t come walking in here, and have a break down, and then pretend that you’re fine. Right, Parker?”

“Hardison’s right,” Parker says. “You’re trying to pretend. You’re not very good at it.”

Eliot doesn’t know what to say.

“I’m—“ he starts to say, and Parker puts a hand over his mouth.

“Nod when you’re ready to tell us how you survived a bomb going off, and I’ll move my hand.”

Eliot does not nod.

Parker sighs again, but as promised, keeps her hand still.

After an awkward minute of them all sitting in the same positions, Eliot finally nods.

He’s ready.

The three of them have moved to the couch, and Eliot tried to sit further away, but neither of his soulmates let him get away with that, and moved closer.

“I’m… it’s a long story.” Eliot says, when they turn to him expectantly.

“We’ve got time,” Parker says, and Hardison bobs his head too.

Eliot takes a deep breath.

“I’m immortal. I can die, but I always come back. Only fatal injuries heal, I get stuck with the smaller ones. I’m old, too. Very old.”

“How old?” Hardison says, after a few moments of silence.

“I was born around the year 100,” Eliot says.

“You’re two thousand years old?” Hardison says, and Eliot nods.

“What else?” Parker says. “You’re not telling us everything. What else is there?”

Eliot gives a little, broken laugh. Then he tells them.

“So wait, we’re like the reincarnated versions of the people you knew before you were immortal? And you thought that it would be better if you pretended not to love us?” Hardison asks.

Eliot nods, not really sure how to convince them that he’s telling the truth.

Hardison and Parker share a look that seems to grab and squeeze Eliot’s heart where it’s beating a solid rhythm in his chest. (That look, it’s always the same look.)

“Okay, what can we do then? To convince you to stop pretending?” Hardison says, and Parker nods.

“Yeah, that sucks and you should stop doing that,” she says.

“Wait, you… believe me?” Eliot says, the slightest bit unsure if they’re fucking with him.

“Yeah, dude, we can just tell? We’ve always sort of been able to tell when you lie. We’ve had like, meetings about your lies.” Hardison says.

“You lie a lot, Eliot.”

“Yeah, Parker, I know,” Eliot manages to work past the lump in his throat.

“Does this mean you’ll stop lying to us now?” 

“…yeah. Yeah it does.”

“Great! Then tell us what we were like in our past lives! Was I still a thief? Hardison can’t have been a hacker because computers didn’t exist. Or were there secret computers? Hardison, did past you have secret computers?”

Eliot sits back in the chair, and lets a smile break out over his face. Soon he’s laughing to himself, and if it has a hysterical edge to it, his soulmates are both kind enough to not point it out.

They got to spend a lifetime with each other. Well, a lifetime for Hardison and Parker, not a lifetime for Eliot.

They’re both old and grey and their bodies are giving out. All three of them can sense that tonight’s Parker and Hardison’s last night. Their bodies are giving up. 

It’s rare that the two of them get to grow old. It’s only happened a handful of times, too many deaths happening before they should, before they got to live satisfying lives. 

“You’ll find us again,” Hardison says, his voice hoarse, but still holding a wealth of strength. His hand is grasping Eliot’s as he lies in a bed they’d rented from the hospital. Neither him nor Parker had wanted to die in a hospital.

“And I’m gonna remember you next time!”

“Don’t. Don’t say that Parker. You always say that, and you never do. Just… please.” Eliot says, his voice breaking on the last word.

“Aw, man, please don’t cry. ‘Cuz then I’ll start to cry, and it messes with my skin, you know that.”

“Damn it, Hardison. I can’t just will myself to not cry. Also, shut up.”

“What, big strong immortal man like you, never dies, but can’t control his own tears?”

“I literally just said to shut up, man.”

“You’re both ridiculous,” Parker says, affection layered in her raspy and tired voice. “El, you’ll find us again, you always do, right?”

“Yeah, Parker. Everytime.”

“Perfect. Then it won’t be too long until we’re all together again. I can’t wait.” Parker’s eyes flutter closed, as if she’s simply falling asleep.

Eliot’s heart beats hard in his chest.

“It’s been good, right?” Hardison says, something desperate in his voice.

“Yeah, Alec. It’s been the best.”

“You don’t regret it? Any of it?”

“None of it. Never.”

“That’s good, man. That’s good.”

“I love you.” Eliot’s desperate to get it in, in their last moments.

“Love you, El,” Hardison says.

“Lo’ you too,” Parker’s voice is soft.

And then they’re gone.

And then Eliot has lost them again.

And then he’s alone once more.

And then he allows himself to cry.

And then he gathers himself, gets up, and walks out of the house they shared for decades, leaving their cooling bodies behind him.

And then he does it all again.

**Author's Note:**

> Just had this story idea after listening to 'Immortal by Reinaeiry', which can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8g-LdDf-pA
> 
> Let me know if you liked it! Also if you spot any mistakes, I didn't do a too thorough editing job. 
> 
> Also lmk if you cried at the end, because I certainly did!
> 
> Kudos welcomed and comments appreciated! Did you like it? Hate it? Want to come to my house and steal all my spoons for that ending? I'd love to hear!


End file.
